How Christopher Kritzman started their print or packaging design journey

Company name

Overview

We're an off-campus housing community at The University of Alabama. Unlike every other off-campus community, we are not apartments - we're stand alone 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-bedroom cottages. The Retreat also offers the nation's best amenities with an 11,000 sq.ft. clubhouse and the largest pool in the state of Alabama. Our cottages feature bedrooms that all have their own private bathrooms, large living spaces, full appliances (including washer and dryer), hardwood floors, spacious closets, front porches and back decks (perfect for grilling out). Amenities include the clubhouse and pool, a PGA Tour golf simulator, tanning beds, computer lab, library, fitness center, clubrooms with TVs, stadium-seating movie theatre, pool tables, card/gaming room and more. Outside we offer 6 football fields of greenspace, water and beach volleyball, a putting/chipping golf green, 2 tennis courts and a basketball court. We also offer two shuttles - one private university-operated shuttle to campus and a night shuttle that basically acts as a "drunk bus". The Retreat is also situated on a 45-acre lake that the residents can access. It has a marina w/ boat rentals and is stocked with 50k fish - so you can go fishing, too. It's an incredible place to live.

Tell us a bit about who you are and the people you reach

All college students, but primarily focusing on sophomores to seniors. (Freshmen need to live on campus). Rates are from $495/month and we tend to be on the higher end of the off-campus communities, so we're do draw a lot of Greeks but we don't want to be seen as being purely a Greek community. All advertising would be done within and around Tuscaloosa and we would be speaking predominantly to the student audience.

Requirements

We want to appear cool, hip and have ads that get noticed . We want to show kids interacting with our product. Our primary point of differentiation is the cottages so we must show those, but we're selling a lifestyle, so we want to ensure that we're showing the kids having a great time. One challenge is that we have an incredible list of amenities -- better than anyone in the counrty -- but we tend to overlist that list and our ads become very busy. Another challenge; making sure our cottages don't look like single family homes that aren't part of a larger community.

Our primary goal with the new ad design is to convey that this place kicks ass; one that is a great value; and one that the audience should consider when looking for a place to live. I've attached an example of an ad that we've done in the past and, while it does an adequate job of promoting The Retreat, it feels too corporate and doesn't jump off the page as much as I'd like.

As much as possible, I'd like to keep the brand look and feel as seen in our current ads (i.e., the logo, color pallete, "mountain" border, etc.) but more compelling.